VMworld 2012: New VMware Releases Targets the SMB

While VMware’s new enterprise oriented vCloud Suite 5.1 garnered the bulk of the media’s attention at VMworld 2012, VMware has not forgotten about SMBs. At this past VMworld 2012 I met with Russell Stockdate, Vice President and General Manager, SMB Solutions for VMware. Russell explained how VMware has just come out with two new releases targeting organization with 1000 or fewer employees:

vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus

vSphere 5.1 Standard Edition with Operations Management

Russell and I discussed how the SMB faces almost all of the same technical issues as large businesses and enterprises however they have a lot fewer resources to devote to virtualization with most SMBs having no more than 2 people covering virtualization. VMware’s goals with the new SMB releases are to provide enhanced business continuity, better support for mobility and improved automation.

One of the big changes that enhances business continuity is the inclusion of the replication engine into both of the new releases. Replication enables DR between different sites. Plus, the new vSphere Data Protection feature provides nondisruptive backups with data deduplication. These are both high-end features that have been moved into the new SMB releases. The new vSphere Enhanced vMotion capability improves mobility by enabling the movement of VMs and optionally their files between hosts without the requirement for shared storage. For better automated management VMware is planning to include VMware Go Pro their virtualization deployment and migration service to organization buying vSphere 5.1 Essentials and Essentials Plus.